Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

French chauvinisme, after Nicolas Chauvin, a legendary French soldier famous for his devotion to Napoleon.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Borrowing from French chauvinisme (originally ‘idealistic devotion to Napoleon’), named from Nicolas Chauvin de Rochefort, a soldier of the First Republic known for his excessive patriotism, especially famous after featuring as a character in Cogniard's play La Cocarde Tricolore.

Examples

Israeli chauvinism is for some reason seen by political elites as the only politically viable stance, but there is no reason to suppose that real people feel the same way.

In polarised situations, it is almost natural for politicians to try and compete with each other in chauvinism rather than in their willingness to accommodate - Sri Lanka and Israel/Palestine are particularly obvious examples, as indeed is Northern Ireland.

I believe most readers would be able to understand that this is the use of the word chauvinism that I had in mind in my comment, even though you believe this use to be an “original albeit nonsensical” one.

While the federal political structure has worked remarkably well in the context of India, where coexistence of several ethnic / linguistic states acts as buffer to any chauvinism from the Hindi heartland, it is unlikely to work in Sri Lanka where there are only two main ethnic groups.